or Why Good People go Left

Leftism, the adherence to any number of “oppressor vs. oppressed” themed ideologies based on Marxist principles continues in popularity long after they should have been discredited by history. It is in its ultimate form, an evil dogma responsible for the murder hundreds of millions of people in the last century, and the impoverishment of hundreds of millions more in this. Despite all this, a large portion of the earth’s population adheres to, at least to some degree, this poisonous ideology. It has its ardent true believers, and those who employ it as a means to gain political power. It also has a large number of what might be called casual adherents that while they lean left, don’t take their collectivist beliefs to quite the extremes as others. They post virtue signaling yard signs on their lawns, support leftist causes, and in the United States, habitually vote Democrat. Are they bad people? Are they evil? Or are they good people who’ve been led astray?

There are several reasons why otherwise fine, decent people support Leftist causes. Some have simply been brought up in left-leaning homes, thus it’s all they know. Others are attracted to high-sounding principles such as equity and diversity. They conflate forced redistribution of wealth with voluntary charity. Leftism trades upon feeling much more than logic. Most casual adherents to Leftism simply fail to take leftist principles to their logical conclusion or fail to see the connection between collectivist polices and the problems they cause.

Leftism has been around as a political concept for a long time. Its modern roots go back to the French Revolution as a struggle between oppressor and the oppressed. Like the American Revolution a few years earlier, it was a struggle for a people to get out from under tyranny, but unlike the Americans who sought to dissolve the tyranny, their revolutionary counterparts in France fought to supplant their oppressors. By the end of that century, leftism had coalesced into socialism with Karl Marx as the titular head of the movement. Since then, socialism spread quickly from Europe to the Americas. By the time Communism took root in Soviet Russia in the early 1920’s, plans were already in the works to spread Marxism in the United States. Also, around that time Progressivism– the idea that people should be led by experts rather than elected representatives was gaining traction in America. Progressives set their sights squarely on public education and conquered it. Fast forward a hundred years and progressivism has melded neatly into leftism to the point where they are basically the same thing. Leftism, now baked into our education system has become such a staple of popular culture, most of the Americans that subscribe to it do so unwittingly. In their families leftist dogma fills the place once occupied by religion. Many leftists today simply know no other way.

Even people who did not grow up in a secular, progressive household can be drawn to leftism due to its values seeming a lot like those held in high esteem. Values like sharing, caring for the less fortunate, and tolerance. They know that “All men are created equal,” is in the Declaration of Independence. They hear someone call for equity, and think it means the same thing. Equality means equality of opportunity. Equity, in this context, means equality of outcome. Equality means doing the same thing as someone else should get you the same result. Equity means achieving the same result, no matter how much skill, effort and even luck a person puts into the same endeavor. They conflate charity with government redistribution of wealth. When they vote for the government to take everyone’s money and give it to the less fortunate, that to the Leftist is morally exactly the same as them giving their own money to the downtrodden. Demanding money for causes they approve of from you is no different than someone else soliciting a donation from you for that same cause. Taking from someone else though government force is just as virtuous to socialist as the voluntary giving to the same persons through charity for the Christian.

To the secular progressive the idea of tolerance seems very much like a Judeo-Christian, American value. “All men are created equal,” is indeed an American value. All men (and women) are indeed created equal, but don’t all contribute equally to the betterment of society or themselves. “Hate the sin but love the sinner” is the true typification of the Judeo-Christian notion of tolerance. The leftist attitude is that vice is virtue when in service of the collective. No behavior, no matter how much it deviates from the norm, is wrong so long as it serves the purposes of the collective at the time. Therefore, it follows, that all behavior must be tolerated, at least as long as it serves the “common good”. The common good being determined by the elite.

The power and attraction of leftism is that it allows people to feel good without them having to do good. It feels good if you believe you’re giving to the poor, particularly if one does not concern oneself with where the money or goods come from. It feels like charity. True charitable giving feels good because it is a voluntary choice to give something to someone else who may need it a little more. The feeling is amplified when there is a direct connection between the gift and the giver. Voting for some scheme that redistributes wealth feels like charity on the surface to some. This is not true charity; it is a false simulacrum of it. Scratch the surface just a little of such schemes and problems become apparent, like creating dependence, and the de-linking the concepts of having with earning. On the other end, this false charity tends to corrupt and oftentimes, the corruption is the point of those who control the redistribution. What does the corrupt official want in return? What price is to be paid either directly or indirectly by the recipient? Votes? Kickbacks to the givers and their friends? A lot of federal and state dollars acts as a boomerang, returning to the giver, though the giver took it from somebody else. They for instance, might give “free” money for solar upgrades for homes. Who gets assigned the contract to to the solar renovation work? Could it be the politician’s own company, or a company the politician just happened to purchase a lot of stock for dirt cheap in? The homeowner, who voted for the politician– (who’s now rich from owning stock in green energy company), gets to feel good that they are fighting a (far-overblown) threat of climate change. Lost to the person who voted to “fight climate change” is the environmental damage and exploitation of foreign workers involved. The same politicians that sell their constituents on renewable energy invariably leaves out the details of where the lithium and other rare-earth metals come from, or who digs it out of the ground. They forget to mention all the birds and sea creatures that died for your clean energy. If they did, you might not feel so good about making your fellow taxpayers pay for such things. As it happens so often with the left, they count the money, the votes, but never the costs. That part is left to someone else.

Collectivism, and its derivative forms of communism, socialism, and fascism are historically, and demonstratively evil. Collectivism is part and parcel of leftism, the belief that the world runs on a binary, oppressor vs. oppressed system. Though leftism in its myriad forms has been responsible for the deaths of millions, and impoverishment of billions, is nonetheless attractive to a large section of the population. It’s been around for a long time and has secreted itself into every nook and cranny of our society. Its ubiquitous makes it seem normal, even moral. It trades on deception, making bad things seem much like good things. It exploits the natural needs of people to feel good about themselves and allows for feeling good without actually doing good. Leftists tend to see only the superficial benefits of what they do, and rarely explore the second and third order of consequences to their policies. Corrupt politicians use leftist appeal to people’s sense of altruism to achieve power. When the bill finally comes due for their reckless policies, they are long gone. It’s the Left’s casual, well-meaning supporters who are among those left paying the price. They are among those left holding the bag, without ever realizing they were asking for it all along.